Book Review

We must be truly
thankful to Father Meyendorff for this wonderful volume. In his Foreword he
explains what odds he had to work against to prepare Fedotov's manuscript
for publication. The result rewards him fully for his pains. The first volume,
dealing with Kievan Russia, has already become a classic; and I have no doubt
that this second volume, devoted to the early Muscovite period, will share
in the same success. We find here all those qualities which made the late
Professor Fedotov a genuine renovator of hagiology: a rare combination of
historical akribeia with a deep
insight into spiritual realities, a unique sense of "balance" between
analysis and synthesis.

Just as in his
study of Kiev, professor Fedotov's approach to the Middle Ages is certainly
not the last word on the complexities of Muscovite Orthodoxy; it is rather
the beginning of a reevaluation which has become necessary. Here, as also
in the first volume, there is a certain tendency toward generalization which
must (and certainly will be) questioned again and again. Some of his verdicts
seem too harsh, as, for example, the end of his chapter on St. Joseph of Volok:
"In his struggle with Nilus and his disciples Joseph destroyed the traditions
of St. Sergius which had become too awkward and cumbersome as religious raiment
for the resplendent Muscovite tsardom" (p. 315). His "icon"
of Novgorod seems a little too idealized, too iconographic, his "anti-Muscovitism"
too systematic. Yet all these are real questions, and the merit of Professor
Fedotov is that he has formulated the problem of Russian religious development
in a tremendously fruitful way. No student of Russian history can bypass his
work. One is equally grateful to Mr. Thomas Bird for the exhaustive bibliography
of Fedotov's writings which concludes the volume.